studied? Once understood and regulated by it, the primæval curse will, in a great degree, be softened into mercy.

Until, however, the very basis, or first principle on which this serious and instituted connection depends, be made manifest, it cannot be thoroughly comprehended. The reader, therefore, must not be startled at the two tables of the law of God being placed before him. Yes, that basis of all the order and harmony in the universe, the Moral Law, "to which all things in heaven and earth do homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power," must direct us here.

This law is generally divided into two tables; and these have been summed up, by the Lawgiver himself, as requir ing the love of God by the first, and the love of man by the second. In both tables it will be seen, that parents are especially regarded. Near the top of the first, no sooner is the divine unity announced, than the honor and glory of God are placed in the most solemn manner under their guardianship; and at the very top of the second, stand the father and mother by name. The first object is to secure for the Almighty the sole and exclusive veneration and worship of all his intelligent creatures, and in order to this, he addresses himself to the root or head of every family. Clothing the parent with high authority, as he intended to do in the second table, the Almighty first informs him, that his highest aim must consist in maintaining the honor of God in his family, and for this end, these remarkable words are employed, "for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments."

To this distinct and solemn intimation, great objections have been expressed; great and general indifference has been evinced, and even some men of no inferior powers have gone so far as to suppose, that such proceeding, on God's part, actually ceased with the Old Testament dispensation, and, that, when the gospel was published, and everlasting punishment was still more clearly threatened to persevering sinners, the former mode of punishment was left off!

Now, had this jeal

If, however, the Almighty here unfolds his own universal law, and if he has continued in all ages to act accordingly, what will the opinions of men avail? "There is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord he is of one mind, and none can turn him." Let the language only be again observed. The whole is said to originate in the jealousy of God. ousy no existence until these words were uttered, or was it confined, in all its merciful severity, to the people to whom it was addressed, to the natural posterity of Abraham, the friend of God? or can we suppose the Almighty to be less jealous of his name and honor now, than once? Is it not rather implied, that this was his own universal rule, originating in his own character, as applicable to the constitution of human nature in the domestic circle, coeval with sin itself, and applied, as it had been, to the family of Adam, the father of mankind? and that, from this malediction, even Israel could only be exempted, by conscientiously observing the commandment? "That on which right and wrong depend," even a heathen sage has told us, "that on which right and wrong depend, did not begin to be law when it was written; it is older than the ages of nations and cities, and contemporary with the eternity of God."*

* Cicero.

Besides, the law which Moses received in writing on Sinai, was not less the law of other nations and times, though given to Moses for Israel. The whole economy of which he was the legislator, notwithstanding its minor peculiarities, was but another gracious interposition of God, to preserve entire the knowledge of himself and his will, in a world from which man would, if possible, have excluded both.

When, therefore, Jehovah said, "for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children," he intimated at once what He had been, what He was, and would be in all successive generations. As for the ages past, was it a new thing in the earth for him to act in the spirit and letter of these words? Who, then, were these people to whom this law was proclaimed, and where were they going? Were they not the posterity of Shem, now on their way to punish the posterity of Ham? A question which at once carries us back to the infancy of a second world, immediately after the deluge, and turns the mysterious journey of Moses and his brethren into a commentary on these very words. When Noah knew what his younger son Ham had done unto him, he said, "Cursed be Canaan (the son of Ham); a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant." Now, does not this descending curse of the Almighty, pronounced by Noah, as a prophet, on his own posterity, stand in perfect conformity with this, the law given on Sinai? and from the deluge until now, had not Jehovah, as a jealous God, watched over its accomplishment? Surely this conspicuous prophecy, and its fulfilment reaching through so many generations, may suffice instead of many illustrations. Several ques

tions, however, I am aware, rise out of the brief narrative in Genesis. Why should Noah take occasion to denounce

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the conduct of his son, with such solemn severity, and and that too in the person of his grandchild, the first-born of Ham? Had Canaan, as it has been conjectured, first given occasion to his father's irreverence and impiety? So it should seem from the terms employed-" Ham, the father of Canaan:" but, at all events, Ham is represented as having sinned, and to such extent as to deserve this awful threatening. Tinctured, it should seem, with the maxims of Cain and his posterity, and supposing, it may be, that the promise of the Messiah was either frustrated in the death of Abel, or altogether false, he made his father the subject of his mockery.

Now, who was this man Noah? In Scripture, no extenuation of his guilt in being overcome by wine is to be found; and he lived long after this to read his own sin in the punishment which he was now inspired to pronounce : but did not Ham know the meaning of the very name given to his father by Lamech? "He called his name Noah (consolation), saying this same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed." Noah, too, had done honor to his name; was a just man, and had so walked with God, that He had said, "Thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation." For more than a century did his son know him to have been a preacher of righteousness; and, moved by fear, he had seen him preparing the ark for the salvation of his household. His father's piety had ensured to him a secure abode, and he had thus outlived a storm in which the world was ingulphed. After this, too, it should be remembered that Jehovah had spoken to “Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold I establish my covenant with you, and your seed after you."

When, therefore, Ham, who had been so singularly saved from a deluge which had swept away every father

except his own; when he, though one of only eight souls, and these the members of one family; when he, who had so escaped, in consequence of the faith and pious fear of his own parent, presumed to mock, not the virtue, but the sin of this, his father; for his combined impiety and filial disobedience, the displeasure of God is pronounced over him and his posterity, by the lips, too, of this very parent.*

No doubt different interpretations of the cause of this curse, from the lips of Noah, may be assigned; but a cause there was, and descend it did, in solemn illustration of this serious and instituted connection between parent and child, so that both Ham and his posterity were involved in this lowering prophecy. Accordingly, long afterwards, many of them perished miserably in Sodom and Gomorrah, for crimes which seem to have also originated in the neglect of family-government. Nay, about eight hundred and fifty, or, according to Hales, above fifteen hundred years after Noah's prophetic denunciation, Egpyt, which was "the land of Ham," suffered awfully in the Exodus, while Shem's posterity are now on the way from Egypt, commissioned to expel the posterity of Canaan. The remnant who survive and remain, are to be "servants to their brethren;" and so were employed in servile work by Solomon and his successors.

On the other hand, an illustration equally striking of the blessing now announced in the decalogue, is furnished by a reference to Shem and his posterity.

Shem had acted differently, and he is blessed indeed. Noah, too, shall live long enough to see his prophecy of blessing also fulfilled, though he died before Abraham was born. As for Shem, on whom the blessing was pronounced, he shall live to enjoy it; and so the gradual

* For the cause why a curse so severe was pronounced on Ham and his posterity, see the Reflections of Allix, Part I. Chap. 13.